Many use home heating fuel that typically is stored in tanks on a customer's premises. The heating fuel may be propane, heating oil, or some other fuel designed for a furnace, fireplace, and/or water heater. The fuel container may be owned by an independent fuel provider or may be owned by the customer. The current way that a customer monitors his or her fuel usage is by periodically walking to the container to look at the container's fill gauge. The gauge usually only presents the fuel level in terms of a percentage of a full tank. This presents a number of problems.
First, it is difficult for customers to accurately monitor the level of fuel in the container. The manual process of checking the fuel level typically is not done on a regular basis, and for many customers it may be done so irregularly that the container may be close to empty between inspections. In many cases, especially when there is a sudden shift to colder weather, customers drastically increase their fuel usage and empty the fuel container. The customer is without fuel until an emergency refill is completed and running out of fuel may cause damage to the equipment using the fuel.
Also, it is problematic for a customer to monitor the rate of fuel usage over a short period of time accurately. The fuel tank may be 500 to 1000 gallons capacity, and it is difficult to determine the amount of fuel used during a short window of time because the tank gauge presents the fuel information in terms of a percentage of a full tank. This is such a coarse resolution that meaningful short term usage information typically is not available. As a result, there is not an accurate mechanism to measure and identify any particular characteristic that may adversely affect fuel use. For example, if the customer is using gas logs in a fireplace, it is difficult to make a determination of the effect the fireplace has on the overall fuel consumption.
In addition, it is difficult for customers to take advantage of variations in fuel price over time or among different providers. Typically, when the tank is owned by the fuel provider, the customer can only purchase fuel from that provider. If the customer owns the fuel tank, he or she can shop for fuel from different providers. When a customer determines that the percentage of fuel remaining in the tank is low, there may be no indication of the current price of replacement fuel. As a result, the customer typically orders a complete refill or a number of gallons of fuel, and the price paid is the current “spot” price of fuel. It should be appreciated that the purchase of a large container of heating fuel at a temporarily high price can be an extremely costly event.